As a working mathematician I have to stand up for Pi, it isnt just another number like 2,3 or even 4! It is an irrational number and a transcendental number.

Also I think people are reading too much into the relationship clue for Pi, we can say that Pi has a relationship to the nature of the circle, and dont need to concern ourselves with ratios.

I do think that relationship is too vague a clue for Pi though.

Hmm. Common mistakes…. the world is flat (500 years ago), the moon is star, well it’s up there ain’t it guv? Doesn’t make them right.

How about if I clue “…too…” as “including a relationship so it sounds?” Meaning sounds like two. I’d get crucified. What’s sauce for the goose…..

Incidentally, “angel investors” are very commonly talked of as one of the options for funding start-up companies.

To perhaps put this in perspective, it pales in comparison to a pub quiz I once went to in London where the following question was asked:

What is the value of ? as a vulgar fraction?

Our eyebrows were naturally raised by this, but we carefully wrote out the answer, “As an irrational number, ? cannot be expressed exactly as a vulgar fraction. However, 22 / 7 is a commonly used approximation.”

To our outrage the quiz master marked this wrong, saying “? is exactly 22 over 7″. Needless to say, we didn’t go back to that quiz, although in a strange coincidence the following week the Guardian sent a “best pub quiz team ever” to the same place, apparently without incident.

Equal to
Not equal to
Less than
Less than or equal to
Greater than
Greater than or equal to

So a ratio, when evaluated, will have a value which and this is expressed by the relationship of being of equal VALUE. I put the capitals in to emphasise that we are not talking about structural identity.

so semantically c/d = pi

is

a ratio which relates to a value using the equality relationship.

So the values are being equated, but the natures of the left and right hand sides are not. The left is a ratio, the right is a number, thay have the same value. But a ratio is not a number, neither is a number a ratio.

Hmm, in the industry I worked in backers were those so and so’s who wanted their pound of flesh, and definitely not angels.

Well in that case either Chambers is wrong or is being read wrongly.

Do you want to call 1.8 a relationship? Of course not, it’s just a number. But it converts quantities of degrees F to quantities of degrees C by being used as a ratio.

The confusion comes from the use of numbers in specific contexts. A number can only represent a ratio in a specific context. In general they are simply numbers. For example, a circle is not the only way of defining pi, it is merely one context in which pi happens to equate to a ratio. It does not make pi a ratio, it is a context in which a ratio is RERESENTED BY the number pi. But pi is still just a number no different from any other.

Try another angle, circumference divided by diameter is a ratio. PI just happens to be the number that represesnts the VALUE of the ratio, the ratio is c/d, not what it evaluates to, that is a number.

12a Angel – a financial backer or advisor esp one who finances theatrical ventures

5a Pi – a symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter

Ratio – the relation of one thing to another

All Chambers definitions

An angel can be a financial backer, especially of theatrical productions.

As I said yesterday, I’m no mathehematician, so will go no further.